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An anonymous reader writes "Here is an interesting article regarding the application of the DMCA safe harbor provisions to search engines. This is what causes Google to remove links from its search results and to put a disclaimer at the bottom of the page stating "In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed [x] result(s) from this page." The article is published in the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology, and there is a direct link to a pdf version of the article."

It's an interesting workaround that Google has worked out. They comply with the DMCA Takedown request to not show the URLs that were requested, but they'll gladly instead link to Chilling Effects who publishes the entire notice Google got, including the URLs in that context.

If you really want the infringing content, you can get to it, but you at least have to scroll through the claim tha tit's infringing and move the URL to the address bar yourself rather than using a hyperlink. Seems like a fair enough deal to me....

Hmmm... I followed that link to search for Tetris, and I couldn't see anything like this. I got ten links to sites with the source. The first offered to sell it to me (for 6 or 7 dollars). The second (at MIT) has the source in java for download. I followed a couple of others, and downloaded source in several languages. Then I deleted them, because I don't really want Tetris. There was no mention of DMCA anywhere that I can see.

This has me puzzled. Why is everyone discussing this suppression of link

the fact that they link to www.chillingeffects.org [chillingeffects.org], which happens to be a joint project of the EFF and a number of top-notch schools:

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse
A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and University of Maine law school clinics.
Do you know your online rights? Have you received a letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or to stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, this site is for you.
Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities. We are excited about the new opportunities the Internet offers individuals to express their views, parody politicians, celebrate their favorite movie stars, or criticize businesses. But we've noticed that not everyone feels the same way. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence other online users. Chilling Effects encourages respect for intellectual property law, while frowning on its misuse to "chill" legitimate activity.

Nothing like educating the public about the dangers of the DMCA/etal by linking them to EFF and the like:).

What they did was whenever the Nazis wanted an article censored (which, given the nature of the newspaper was very often) instead of replacing it with another article they simply cut it out and left the space blank (except for a character with a huge pair of scissors representing the censors). The blanks in it were more telling than the remaining articles in that you knew how much the Nazis didn't want you to know (but not what of course).

Instead of putting the DMCA link at the end Google should put the search result where it would normally have been except replaced with:

"Due to a complaint(link to complaint containing the censored link) from $company citing the DMCA(link to more info) we cannot show you this result"

Or: "$company doesn't want you to know about that link so they invoked the DMCA(link) to silence us. Here is the complaint(link) where the tell us which links they don't want you to know about"

I'm not really sure, but the DMCA is for the US only, so shouldn't I be able to get all the results from Germany using google.de? Using your search on google.de gives the same notice (and URL is.ca anyway).

I tried this with both mozilla and firefox, and neither got a page with the letters "DMCA" anywhere. The bottom of the page doesn't seem to have any links except the usual google boilerplate links. Other replies say something about a Chilling Effects Clearinghouse link, but I don't see anything like that, either.

What might I be doing wrong.

Oh, also, following this link seems to have done something that really hosed both mozilla and firefox. They became only semi-functional, unable to follow links or fi

Police can't tell a newspaper that they cannot publish information, but they can tell them that they shouldn't and they can also threaten to deny any media-access rights that they don't have to give the paper but only do so out of courtesy.

And really, that's what a DMCA Takedown notice equates to... "We swear that we own the copyright to this and we want it taken down right away." The ISP doesn't have to comply, but they have to serve that notice to the user, or be liable for contributing to the infringment. They also have to put it back if the user swears back that they do have the right to put that piece of work up, which will also shield the ISP for being responsible and put all the responsiblity on the user, who has now steped forward and identified themselves for easy suing...

a) The RIAA/MPAA (and others that misuse DCMA) aren't the police, although they'd like to think otherwise. In truth the police are putting way too much focus on fighting copyright/IP violations though...

b) Newspapers have certain rights with respect to the police etc. While "freedom of the press" has had to fight to stay alive sometimes, there is no "freedom of the search engine"

The DMCA Takedown process is really just a way to scare users into backing down. Those familiar with the law would know that users can send a counter-notification swearing that they're not really infringing, and then the provider has to reinstate the work but still gets to enjoy the liability shield of having complied with the DMCA Takedown rules... and then the copyright holder has no choice but to go after the user directly if they want to keep going.

Of course, in a majority of the times, the copyright holder is correct and this actually prevents a needless cause from going into the overworked court systems. The makers of Kazaa Lite could send Google a counter-notification to get back into the system, and then Shawman Networks would be in the uncomfortable situation of having to file a US-based lawsuit, despite trying to otherwise stay out of US jurisdiction.

I think the Kazaa example is hillarious. They try to defend their product despite the fact that it is 95%+ used for illegitimate activities, and then they get uppiddy when someone uses the same tactics against THEM.

What legal grounds do you think you have to prosecute Kazaa? They don't advocate drug use or murder. File-sharing? OOOOOOH! Lord save society.

The legal ground is contributory infringment. They know they are profiting from copyright infringment, that that is the basis of almost all their userbase and therefore their profits. When a manufacturer makes a product that is explicitly designed to be used to commit a crime, they are responsible for that crime.

The problem is it's not explicitly designed to be used to commit a crime. It's explicitly designed to allow people to share files. What files those people choose to share is what determines if there is a crime. And can you proove in court that they know they are profiting from copyright infringement? I doubt they monitor the network and cross check all the files for legitimacy.

"We don't prosecute the makers of rolling paper just because people roll joints. Plenty of pre-rolled cigarettes are available at low cost."Pre-rolled ciggarettes make me feel sick and the rolling tobacco I buy is a fraction of the cost of even the cheapest pre-rolled ciggarettes that I can buy here.I think your analogy would be more accurate if rolling paper had drug dealers phone numbers printed on them.Just thought I'd point that out.

They'd have no problem getting into a US-based lawsuit. After all, they had no problem getting US lawyers. The only problem is if they win $$$, they'd have trouble keeping it since the RIAA/MPAA would probably force the court to hold onto it.

No, in all reality, they sell you to the circus because they know that you'll dance before you'll die. They make you dance, and fly, and jump through hoops. The crowd cheers. Some people laugh, some people cry, but they all go home with a great sense of entertainment.

And, at the end of the day, you get to eat another portion of rotten meat and tasteless meal. If you don't perform tomorrow then they send you out on the road to take your chances with the homosexual police offic

Leeches? Like the parasites who make a living suing the city when they "accidentally" trip over potholes. Or the parasites who fake disability. Or the parasites managers who shave hours off workers timesheets. Or the parasites who increase productivy with robots but keep the gains to themselves while the unemployed starve because welfare is still a dirty word. Or the parasites who... bla bla.

The sad fact is that the parasite-to-"honest"-host ratio is almost the same in society as it is nature: pretty damn high.

(Actually, this never did make much sense to me. The moon is about 1.3 light seconds from our planet, so the round trip time plus local network time would result in searches taking a minumum of 3 sec, and usually a lot longer. This would seriously impact their response time. I mean, would you want to use a search engine that took over 3 seconds to search N gazillion pages?)

It's crap like this that absolutely works to destroy the usefulness and wonder of the Internet.

Yeah, but it sure does make the control freaks in power cream their pants.

But not to worry - it also absolutely works to accelerate the evolution of untouchable p2p search vs. centralized cluster search. A hard problem, sure, but more attractive by the day. (the control freaks could also attempt to kill this free communication by requiring "trusted routers" not to route "untrusted" packets; only way to counter

This seems backwards. Kazaa can search for "kazaa" on Google and find "non-kazaa" material, so they tell Google to take it down? Since when is the search engine responsible for the content they generate by just following links on the web (forgive me if I'm unfamiliar with how Google crawls the web)?

Why not send notices to the websites directly? Oh, wait, that would mean that they would have to spend the time and find the people who are actually "breaking" the copyrights and prosecute them directly. That's too much work.

It's the same thing that the RIAA is doing -- going after the end-user in court because it's easier that way. I wonder what happened to the racketeering charges that were brought up.

DMCA affects phonebooks... you got it. If a phonebook lists someone who is attempting circumvent copy protection, the phone book publisher must collect all the phonebooks they released with their contact information, and republish redistribute the phonebooks.

It will be notied that future editions will list the absent numbers on the back pages with a note removed due to DMCA.

This is ridiculous. I think the US (government) should stop pretending their laws apply to online material just because people can access the internet from their country. I mean, why on earth do I have to have censored search results?

It would be just as silly if people in the US couldn't do searches on certain words because my country thinks it's not OK for the search engine to provide such results.

If they want filterning then they should run such filters on google.com only. I can't see how the DMCA should apply to google.it or google.com.ar or any other such domain.

What I am saying is NOT that the internet should have no rules at all, but trying to enforce your country's rules on the internet is NOT A GOOD OR REALISTIC APPROACH. The only thing you will achieve is people from other countries trying to avoid having anything to do with your country.

How do you think an italian citizen feels when they see that they can't do uncensored searches on google.it because the US dmca laws apply to it as well? Does it seem fair to you? How would you feel if google.com banned se

I love this logic: Yeah, the US sucks ass, but at least it's not Soviet Russia. Like that makes it better some how. I have a revolutionary idea, how about we change some of this crap instead of patting ourselves on the back about how not Soviet Russia we are.

oh well....screw it.... I say BUSH IN '04!!!!!! I need a good excuse to move up there....

Danger, danger! Don't get complacent. Our friggin' Heritage Minister is now in bed with the recording industry and wants to amend Canadian copyright law to give record labels more power. Get involved now to stop this from happening - join the forum [digital-copyright.ca] and get organized.

There are several other countries that have a democratically elected government, with personal liberties and freedoms protected under their constitutions/charters. The US doesn't have the market cornered on that.

``You may not beable to vote, speak your mind or any number of any other things but at least you can access information about hacking et al and that makes you free?''

Nice troll. The USA is not the only country with freedom of the press and elected government. In fact, it's not even that democratic if you consider there are only two parties that can really compete for power, both of which depend heavily on corporate funding for their campaigns. With the press under control of large corporations, and the pol

``And unlike much of this other "Free World" you speak of, we can still vote.

And since we can vote, we can work to get rid of it.''

Attacking this point specifically:

Yes you can vote, but you may not be able to get rid of the DMCA. To do that would require there being a party that would abolish the DMCA, and that party getting elected (or at least powerful enough to abolish the DMCA). Since politics is about much more than the DMCA alone, such a party would likely have other things in its programme that you don't like. And that others don't like. And then either not get enough votes to kill the DMCA, or introduce other laws that you would not want to have.

Since the US' political system is ill-suited to more than 2 parties, the chance that you (plural) can vote for a party that 1) will abolish the DMCA, and 2) otherwise suits your tastes is quite slim.

The issue is that you can't vote for or against one issue, you vote for a party and it's entire programme.

Did I mention that the corporations will probably try to influence public opinion in such a way that they become more powerful?

Which is why elected representitives should be made to represent the interests, wishes and view of the people whom they represent. The representitive should not vote according to "the party line" or his/her own views but according to the (majority) views/wishes of the community which elected them.

And unlike much of this other "Free World" you speak of, we can still vote.

What the hell are you talking about? By "Free World" he/she was talking about free countries with democratically elected governments, basic human rights, liberty, and freedom of speech which are upheld by the laws in those countries.

How exactly did you manage to read and interpret "Free World" as meaning "countries without even voting rights"? What bizarre definition of "Free World" did you use? This is not sarcasm, please explai

The primary effect the DMCA has on Search Engines and other Internet sites that allow user posting is that it forces the site operator to make a decision for themselves over whether a work is infringing before the court case... and then puts its thumb on the scale. If they refuse to comply with a proper takedown notice they'll be liable to the copyright holder, while if the needlessly take take down the piece they will lose nothing or very little unless they're a major paying customer.

No wonder most companies, when confronted with a DMCA Takedown letter choose the path of least resistance.

Kazaa had Google remove [google.com] several links to Kazaa Lite pages [chillingeffects.org], and not long ago Scientology tried the same against a Scientology-critical site.

While some here cheer that Google put a reference to the the Kazaa Lite pages removed (or rather to the DMCA notice which includes the URLs of those pages), effecly nullyfing the effect, it is worrying me instead.
Fact is that Companies and Organisations can force the removal of Links from Search Engines, and if those Engines don't act as smartly as Google here (be it due to fear of lawsuits from those Organistions or due to simple lazyness) we might not even notice it....

-----Fact is that Companies and Organisations can force the removal of Links from Search Engines-----Yet I still can't remove the references returned by Google propagated by some script kiddie with my mail address as an index token.

If you would like permission to legally view the content of search engines such as Google, contact SCO licensing [mailto] where we can provide individual licenses for only $699 per search engine or a bulk license of $10^699 for all search engines.

If you do not comply I will publicly brand you a Linus long-hair and GNU hippy, and will ask Microsoft for money to sue you with.

is that we need to fight this infringing legislation by our votes, tax dollars, and our consumer dollars. Fight the supporters of this legislation by avoiding their products. Use alternatives that promote free speech and _total_ fair use.

I'm sick of America being bullied around by the corporations. We are the people. We have the power here.

Fight with you pockets...and your _paper_ ballots (unless of course Diebold has their way with the government.)

-----Fight the supporters of this legislation by avoiding their products-----Until you realize that competency with their products determines the grades of your children which will be used to decide how well they do in life.

The system is skewed in favor of the mediocre majority who already have the cash. We'd better learn to accept it or die a long, slow, mundane death at the hands of homelessness and hunger.

Are you surprised? I've been watching it happen since 1999. I've tried to warn people. They wouldn't listen. In all reality they banded together to ride me out of town so that they could put their heads back in the sand.

I'm handing in my two week notice on Monday because of the Big Brother authoritarianism.

I see the term "safe harbor" a lot in American law. What is it actually supposed to mean, what is it's provenance, and where is it applied? So far it seems a very vague and generic catch-all, but it obviously has some specific meaning to the courts, and seems particularly meaningful in the context of the DMCA.

Well, basically the idea is one of shelter. If you do what you need to do to qualify for it, you're sheltered from legal actions you'd otherwise be exposed to. But it's just shorthand for an idea -- there are various safe harbor provisions in the law, and they differ in terms of what the prerequisites are to take advantage of them and what they protect one from.

I speed read the 23 pages, and basically it seems to (IANAL) boil down to the fact that search engines want to remain within the laws that are protecting them -- the DMCA safe harbours. Classified as an "information retrieval tool", search engines must make sure that they do not knowingly link to material that violates the DMCA. So when Sharman Networks comes along and tells Google that it is linking to material that violates the DMCA, the people at Google put on their best poker faces and cry "oh no, surely not!". Under the safe harbours, Google then has to remove this content, or they can be held responsible. The most interesting part of the paper points out that adopting this behaviour will never justify the safe harbour use:

... service providers, being risk-averse, will widely embrace the safe harbors in an attempt to avoid the uncertainty of liability outside them. Due to the widespread use of the safe harbor procedures, courts will not be given the opportunity to decide cases clarifying the liability of service providers, as service providers will err on the side of caution and liberally remove content in response to notifications. The resulting lack of judicial clarification will reinforce the use of these procedures, thus creating a self-perpetuating cycle.

If one is interested in studying a "taboo" topic they'll join mailing lists as well. Especially in the case of religion and potential cults, nobody with any sense is going to just talk to one group. You're going to talk to members, ex members, and do your own studying.

You need to join message/news groups for that and the DMCA has no effect on those. The DMCA can't control what somebody sends to my e-mail account in response to a request for information.

I completly agree, but in the mean time, ill just keep my figners crossed that we dont "import" this or a similar law to Canada.

It scares me that the US could have actually passed and implimented somthing like the DCMA. Even if we dont end up following big brother, I would be suprised if companies creating DCMA complient devices and tecnologies for the American market could be bothered to take the time to those "features" for non US markets.

I'll just keep my figners crossed that we dont "import" this or a similar law to Canada.

Please, I beg you, do more than that! After that Federal Court of Canada ruling [canoe.ca] (that file/music sharing is legal within Canadian copyright law) the Heritage Minister changed her tune all of a sudden... gee I wonder why? A stroke of pity for the CRIA [www.cria.ca], no doubt. What happened in the US and EU is slowly happening here in Canada too. Let's fight it, because really these government measures are meant to give the industry

The basic idea set forth by the DMCA is that digital security and protection (for copyrighted material) will always be able to be broken (the nature of digital information), and that a never-ending race between the protections and the cracks is not beneficial to anyone. To keep that from happening, the DMCA says that breaking protections is illegal and that the security does not need to be perfect (impossible to acheive) to protect content. That is quite an admirable goal; freeing content producers to worry

idea: the government is now trying people under newer, harsher, more unreasonable "terrorist" laws. Example: trying drug dealers as "manufacturing chemical weapons" instead of the less frightening and less severe "drug trafficing". So if a criminal is caught and is going to be pounded by the "MAN" what he should do is to quickly hire someone to charge him of the same crime but under a less severe law and then he will quickly plead quilty before he is taken to trial for the more severe charges. Then bec

1) If I link to a site that links to a site that has DMCA violating speech, does that mean my site is violating aswell? what about google? If so, how far does this chain go?

2) What if someone links to a google cache?

3) Can I say DMCA violating things to my lawyer? What about to a public court?

4) If I violate the DMCA outside America, will the FBI trick me into going to Rome and then drug me and take me back to the USA?

5) If I say something that violates the DMCA on national TV will viewers be breaking the law by watching, and will Tivo be breaking the law by recording it? will these people also require a trial?

6) If I wear DMCA violating clothing can the police confiscate it if it means i would be breaking public nudity laws? (ie it could be underwear too)

7) Im i allowed to violate the DMCA while engaged in sexual intercourse in the state of Florida? What if its consensual?

8) When praying, is it ok to attempt to tell God that the shift key will disable some CD copy-protection systems?

9) On violating the DMCA, certain evidence would be submitted to court, such as video/audio tapes containing said violation. Who owns this evidence, who can see it and how does the freedom of information act apply to it?

10) I thought of a way to circumnavigate X device, am I liable under the DMCA if the thought is in my head? what would happen if i talked about it in my sleep? Could i write about it in a private diary? an online journal? a letter?

Since the only "copy protection" that can be violated while engaged in sexual intercourse would be a condom, the DMCA would not apply (I would also contend that sex is an analog function, not a digital one, unless you're going the grope). Circumventing this form of copy protection, while inconvenient in the long term, is only illegal if one person engaged in intercourse is knowingly HIV-positive.

I think you miss understood the question, what I want to know is if i can for example sexually violate - ie rap

Well, I haven't read/. yesterday, so this is probably going to be the last post in this thread;-)

This nice line: "In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed [x] result(s) from this page." reminds me of old communist times here in Poland, when you could read in a newspaper something like that (translated): "removed under the Control of Publications and Performations Act". So, the Soviet Union is no more, Eastern Block collapsed and now we see somethi

sorry for feeding the troll but,
File sharing programs are by no means illegal, sharing files isn't illegal either, just some files whose "owners" don't want anyone to have without giving them money and eff will debate that

Actually that isn't quite correct. There is a split in the circuits. Grokster was ruled legal but Aimster was not. Judge Posner's argument for ruling Aimster illegal was the willful blindness to the activity of your users did not shield you from contributory infringement.

My argument would be that if those users downloaded just one legal track, that would be enough to confirm any belief that they were going to be used for legal purposes.
I know I use my uni's filesharing hub to download linux distros, as the Computer Dept gets shirty about downloading from outside the uni. And there are plans, if the hub ever gets shut down, to start meeting up and swapping CDs as an alternative. If filesharing software is banned, CD burners will take up a lot of the slack. Should we ban th